Moments of truth. Everybody has one or maybe several. So it is with times of inspiration. Everybody has that reference of sight, smell, sound, touch, feeling or piece of imagination that inspires. For me, [...]

“How to become a professional travel blogger? Naturally, this is a right thought, because you cannot rush into a new adventure being unprepared. Understand that starting a travel blog is not difficult; it [...]

Penguin presents Left, Right and Centre, edited by Nidhi Razdan Nidhi Razdan’s Left, Right and Centre offers candid and freewheeling thoughts from the political standpoint of the left, right and centre. A confluence of thinkers, [...]

Pan Macmillan India is delighted to announce the release of the 10TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION of Ramachandra Guha’s bestseller, INDIA AFTER GANDHI- The History of the World’s Largest Democracy Published to coincide with seventy years [...]

Posts tagged politics

Actually she isn’t. That headline was only meant to grab eyeballs. She fought again odds to educate herself. No not just school or college. She dared to go to the university. And then get herself a post graduation degree. Though she married my father through an arranged marriage, there was nothing ‘arranged’ about her marriage. […]

Symbols matter. Symbols sum up ideals that are bigger than phraseology and represent the best of humanity. And no one knows how an intangible idea brimming with something vast and indefinable, gets distilled into a symbol and comes to belong to all of us. When artist Shepard Fairey created the iconic Barack Obama poster emblazoned with the word “Hope” in 2008-2009, […]

The US elections saddened me beyond belief. I didn’t know that an election process in a part of the world so far away from mine would impact me to such an extent. Truth be told, it has. I’ve considered myself an optimist and have always banked on the hope that the world is slowly gaining momentum towards […]

When a television serial right in the middle of an innocuous narrative about a controlling mother and an independent daughter-in-law weaves in a little banter about demonitisation with one of the characters hailing it, when a plug inserted between ads on FM radio says, “Desh ko line pe laana hai toh line mein lagiye” and […]

Let’s begin with a story. A poor woman, a mother of five, is divorced by her husband. Uneducated, with no means of income to support her, she approaches the court for alimony to keep her body and soul together and take care of her children. After the usual delay that the legal procedure is wont […]

The important thing to learn from this time in human history is that appealing to people’s better judgement, their higher selves, their intelligence and sense of decency and right and wrong no longer works. If you appeal to their baser selves, their misogyny and irrationality, their hatred for the loathed ‘others’ (be they women, the […]

How easy it is to judge folks whose shoes we have not walked in. The largely lonely battle Karan Johar fought to save his film from hyper nationalist bullies and his desperate video which I could not bring myself to watch, the patriotism tax of Rs five crore and the backlash that followed did not […]

“Kaanch ki haandi ko kitni baar chadhaenge ?” How many times will you put a glass bowl on flames and pretend to cook something in it? Last night, this question was asked by Kanhaiya Kumar as he addressed a charged gathering of hundreds of young JNU scholars who with joyful irreverence laughed at […]

I have always been proud of the fact that my family embraced different cultures and religions with equal love and joy. My father is a Hindu Rajput from Gharwal, Uttrakhand and my mother a Muslim from Srinagar, Kashmir. They fell in love in the 80’s and got married after a little resistance from some of […]

When one takes a good long look at the people around us, the world in general – what does one see ? Does one see peace, harmony, equality or does one see discrimination, prejudice, inequity ? One look and it is only too evident that if there is one thing definitely on the increase, it is intolerance. […]

These walls used to be lined with books. Now they hold imprints of a different kind. History was made here that day, and people unmade, in fire, in smoke, in blood and sticky gore. ** In the stillness of the empty room, you can still feel the heat, hear the hopeless cries, the sense of […]

What is the meaning of a republic? Is it a selectively amnesiac entity where bull dozers run over and flatten the lives and dignity and pets and homes and belongings of the poor while builders advertise gated communities protected from the “noise and the pollution” of the big metros for the benefit of those they […]

Admins

Mission Statement

Who are we? We are writers. And here, in this space, we put pride and passion back into writing. We give ourselves and each other creative freedom and respect.

* We create an environment where content generation does not entail degeneration of inspiration and spirit.
* We create content that we believe in and identify with.
* We recognise that to create is always of more value than to berate.
*We critique without malice and arrogance.

This site is about us writers, what we stand for but more importantly, about creating something valuable, inclusive, thought-provoking. In this space, we do not just stand for ourselves but for all those who listen to a compelling inner voice that tells them, "Create!"